The taskforce is the brainchild of Susan Scott-Parker, head of the Employers' Forum on Disability (EFD), which represents some 400 companies in the UK.

"EFD's job is to make it easier for companies to get it right in employing disabled people and serving disabled customers -- accessible IT is crucial to that," says Scott-Parker.

User viewpoint

"Our members are only just beginning to understand the procedures that allow disabled people to use their systems. Buying IT that is not accessible is like buying a car without wheels -- it is no use. Our objective is to see IT accessibility positioned in the same way as IT security."

Scott-Parker points to insurance company Legal & General's experience in redesigning its website to make it more accessible. The move increased sales by 90 percent, achieved a return on investment in 12 months and produced savings of £200,000 per year on site maintenance.

The lesson has not been lost on other organizations. Ford Motor Company, for example, set up a taskforce in January to look into website accessibility with a brief to revamp all the company's internal sites.

Meanwhile, the taskforce aims to spearhead work on improving IT by defining and communicating the business benefits of accessibility. The group wants to help CIOs develop practical corporate governance on accessibility and to work on producing better standards.

Accessibility standards are particularly important because there are few clear guidelines for CIOs at present. The World Wide Web Consortium has produced standards relating to website content accessibility although they are difficult to apply. There are no all encompassing standards.

The taskforce aims to plug the gap by circulating standards that its own members have developed. Members such as the DWP, Lloyds TSB and HMRC, which is currently reviewing the accessibility of its systems, already have considerable experience in developing inclusive IT.

One area that Scott-Parker hopes that the taskforce will also be able to make an impact is in boosting the training and accreditation of IT professionals. She wants to make it impossible to hire an IT person who doesn't know how to make a system accessible.

Suppliers and regulators are also in the taskforce's sights. "We want suppliers to do more to adapt their products to the needs of disabled people. It is a matter of raising our game on both sides," she maintains. "We need to help suppliers to better meet the needs and expectations of their corporate clients."

Many suppliers are already taking action. A group which includes Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Novell recently formed the Accessibility Interoperability Alliance to help make it easier for disabled people to plug devices such as screen readers, magnifiers and text-to-speech systems into their products.

Supplier reaction

Disability discrimination law in the UK focuses on employers, which are required to make adjustments. There is no equivalent requirement for suppliers to build accessibility into their systems, although many US companies may have already done so in order to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which includes a section insisting that all federal agencies provide adaptations.

That has not stopped some well-known suppliers from being pursued by disabled civil servants. In one recent case a blind employee of the State of Texas sued Oracle because he could not access information about his expenses from its systems.

The taskforce also wants to influence EU lawmakers so that they push accessibility standards more rigorously. "It is a case of some of the largest spenders (on IT) coming together to make sure that the regulations that are emerge are useful," Scott-Parker explains.

Accessibility specialists welcome the taskforce. "A high-level initiative to wake up CIOs and suppliers could be a very significant development, although it depends on what happens next," says Bill Fine, consultant at AbilityNet, a charity that provides information on accessible IT to employers. "CIOs need to help each other in this area."

IT departments may have a steep learning curve on accessibility, but if efforts by a small group of pacemakers pay dividends then millions of people stand to benefit. The big question now is whether these leaders can persuade the rest to follow in their path.